Quotes from Milton Friedman

In a crisis we are all Keynesians.

Freedom is a rare and delicate plant

The particular consequence that I find most indefensible is the havoc wreaked on residents of Colombia, Peru, and other countries because we cannot enforce our own laws. I have yet to hear an acceptable justification of that consequence.

The source of tolerance is the recognition that none of us have the absolute truth. There can be no tolerance without humility.

given the proper kind of training. In the next year or two, every school

almost all professions requiring licensure, people may try to get admitted more

Let us not underestimate the ingenuity of the poor people in converting what they get from the relief worker to what they want. And that's just wasteful. They would be far better off if we just gave them the money and let them spend it.

After the fall of communism, everybody in the world agreed that socialism was a failure. Everybody in the world, more or less, agreed that capitalism was a success. And every capitalist country in the world apparently deduced from that what the West needed was more socialism.

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.

The great tragedy of the drive to centralization, as of the drive to extend the scope of government in general, is that it is mostly led by men of goodwill who will be the first to rue its consequences

In part because there are so many laws to break; and the more laws there are to break, the harder it is to prevent them from being broken

Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit.

It proclaimed a new nation, the first in history established on the principle that every person is entitled to pursue his own values: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise.

Fair' is in the eye of the beholder; 'free' is the verdict of the market. The word 'free' is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with 'freedom.' The word 'fair' is not used in either of our founding documents.

What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.

At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.

Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so?

The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.

We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage.

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority.

The view that government's role is to serve as an umpire to prevent individuals from coercing one another was replaced by the view that government's role is to serve as a parent charged with the duty of coercing

We observe, and are always asking ourselves the question, why it is that in the Western world intellectuals tend to be collectivists. Certainly one reason is that by nature their whole interest is in questioning things, including whatever society they're in. But in a collectivist society they can't speak up because of suppression, whereas in a free society they can. So the only intellectuals heard from tend to be collectivists.